Research methods and worked examplesLearn from the reference set.
Fifteen examples connect industry structure, company capabilities, economic value and evidence to a decision.
Open scenario workbench →Curated from the supplied reference pack. Historical reports provide analytical methods; vendor pages describe their own capabilities. Their forecasts and product claims are not current verified inputs for your reports.
E01 · ProductStart here
Altana
Product → supplier network → scenario
Give every scenario a selected product or work package, an affected supply path and a baseline comparison. A user should be able to replace one candidate supplier and see which constraints and economic estimates change.
What to inspect and how to interpret it
Open Sourcing & Procurement. Inspect “The Product Catalog,” “Proactively model tariff impacts,” and “Simulate any scenario.” The page links short walkthroughs; the underlying application requires commercial access.
A shipment-derived connection does not establish program eligibility, available capacity or a binding supply contract. Revenue-impact and completeness claims are vendor claims; they were not benchmarked here.
E02 · ProductStart here
S&P Capital IQ Pro — Network View
Company-centered exploration
Support search, recenter, expand one step, collapse and a synchronized table. Preserve the selected program and product filters when the focal company changes; show the exact path connecting two organizations.
What to inspect and how to interpret it
Open the retailer case study and scroll to “Visualize trade networks.” The illustration places a company in the middle, suppliers to the left and customers to the right, with two relationship depths.
Do not copy the case’s exclusion-by-association logic into a general risk score. A commercial relationship is evidence of a connection, not proof that a company shares another company’s conduct.
E03 · ProductStart here
Sayari Graph and public data-model documentation
Evidence, ownership and entity identity
Make evidence inspectable for each individual assertion. Keep legal ownership separate from supplier links and operations location. Preserve unresolved identity candidates instead of silently combining organizations with similar names.
What to inspect and how to interpret it
Read the public Data Model page first: the worked UK-registry example has network, attribute and relationship diagrams. Then read “Entity Resolution,” especially “Possibly same as,” and the Graph product page.
Do not treat a multinational parent and a local facility as the same object. Do not copy any vendor’s scale or accuracy claims into a platform promise. Commercial data and redistribution rights require a separate evaluation.
E04 · ProductStudy next
Sourcemap — Map & Trace to Origin
Facility and product verification
Attach capability and capacity claims to the facility and product they apply to. Provide an evidence-request queue with an owner, due date and response status. Let an analyst trace a claim back through the verification history.
What to inspect and how to interpret it
Open the product page for the supply-chain application screenshot. Read “What n-Tier Mapping Roll-out Looks Like” and “Verified at the product level.”
A supplier’s attestation is a source class, not automatic independent verification. Supplier engagement and data maintenance require operational effort; this is not solved by drawing a more elaborate graph.
E05 · Public interactiveStart here
Harvard Growth Lab — Atlas of Economic Complexity
Capability adjacency and opportunity discovery
Create a capability-gap matrix and an opportunity scatterplot. For each candidate, show both economic attractiveness and the missing requirements, then allow users to inspect the evidence for moving into the adjacent activity.
What to inspect and how to interpret it
Open Growth Opportunity, select Canada and a data year, then compare Graph View and Table View. Inspect the distance axis, Product Complexity / Opportunity Gain switch, sector controls and Data Notes. Also open Product Space from the left navigation.
Country-level export relatedness is not a supplier certification test or a probability of winning a contract. Adapt the interface idea, then validate company-level suitability using specific facilities, skills, approvals and capacity.
E06 · Product + reportStart here
Grata — market mapping and the HVAC playbook
Market landscape → actionable target list
Let users move from a complete scoped universe to an explicitly filtered shortlist. Keep multi-activity membership in the underlying data, even when the presentation shows one primary category. Add relationship strength and next actions only after capability discovery.
What to inspect and how to interpret it
Read “The PE Playbook: HVAC”: inspect the market map, ownership/segment breakdowns, geographic analysis, transactions and public-comparables section. The page is dated July 6, 2026 despite its 2025 URL.
A logo map is not proof of supply relationships. Estimated company revenue, acquisition readiness and market coverage need visible definitions and source dates. Do not label a target “for sale” based only on an inferred signal.
E07 · ProductLater extension
Celonis — Process Intelligence Graph and BMW
Internal operations and realized value
For company customers, eventually connect external market opportunities to actual orders, costs, capacity and service performance. Track an opportunity’s baseline, intervention and realized outcome rather than leaving it as a recommendation forever.
What to inspect and how to interpret it
Open the 2024 product showcase for actual PI Graph, Copilot and planning-app screenshots. Read the BMW partnership announcement for a named-company deployment example.
This requires internal operational data and a different integration effort from public industry mapping. Treat process mining as an extension; the first release can support the external value-chain decision workflow without recreating it.
E08 · Product + analysisStudy next
FactSet — Vuzix multi-tier exposure example
Indirect economic exposure for investors
Build an investor view that explains how a selected holding connects to a theme or dependency. Show disclosed versus estimated exposure separately, and preserve the date on which each input became available.
What to inspect and how to interpret it
Read the worked Vuzix example, especially Tables 1–4. Compare the direct supplier/customer lists with the indirect relationships and the relationship keywords.
A second-tier link is not a quantified loss transmission coefficient. Revenue geography, procurement geography and ownership geography answer different questions. This historical example is a design reference, not a current recommendation on Vuzix.
E09 · ReportStart here
BCG / SIA — semiconductor value-chain reports
Industry structure, specialization and investment
Build an industry overview with activities as columns and regions or company cohorts as rows. Let users change the metric from market size to capital intensity or concentration without changing the underlying activity definitions.
What to inspect and how to interpret it
Start with the 2021 summary’s regional value-chain exhibit and “An Integrated Global Supply Chain.” Pair it with the 2024 follow-on report summary on geographic diversification and capacity investment.
Regional shares and forecasts are historical. They should inspire the analytical structure, not become default 2026 values. An industry stage can contain many buyable work packages with different economics.
E10 · ReportStart here
US DOE — advanced nuclear commercialization
Demand commitments, capacity and decision windows
Give every opportunity a dated sequence of prerequisites. Show the difference between announced demand and committed work, and expose how delayed certification or investment changes the attainable share of a program.
What to inspect and how to interpret it
Use the public “Explained in Five Charts” article. Focus on Figure 1 (deployment paths and industrial capacity), Figure 2 (commercial scale-up phases), and Figure 15 (cost-reduction categories).
This is a historical US nuclear commercialization analysis. Its numbers, targets and policy assumptions are not Canadian defence benchmarks. Transfer the dependency logic, then source the economics for each new industry.
E11 · ReportStudy next
WIPO — smartphone value capture
Where value is created and retained
Keep revenue, gross profit, local value added and government-program spending as separately defined measures. For a company view, compare its position in the chain with the economics retained at that position.
What to inspect and how to interpret it
Open the full PDF at printed page 96 for the smartphone chain. Read pages 100–103, especially Figure 4.3 on gross profit versus value added and Figure 4.4 on lead-firm value capture. PDF page numbers match these printed page numbers.
A local facility’s sales are not automatically local GDP, and corporate headquarters do not locate all value creation. The phones and estimates are historical; the accounting distinctions remain the useful reference.
E12 · ReportStudy next
McKinsey — unbundling the life-insurance value chain
A service-industry test of the platform
Ensure the model handles intangible services and contractual relationships. A company should be able to assess an activity it could own, outsource, partner on or acquire without requiring a physical component or a shipment record.
What to inspect and how to interpret it
Read the sections on product development, asset management, distribution, and operations/technology. Inspect Exhibit 5, which compares three insurer archetypes.
US life insurance has specialized capital and risk measures. Premiums, assets under management and revenue must not be summed as if they were interchangeable value pools.
E13 · ReportStart here
BCG — Striking Gold with EV Battery Recycling
Profit pools plus realistic entry strategies
Make opportunity recommendations explain both why an activity is attractive and why this company can participate. Provide entry paths with required partners, investment, missing capabilities and the consequences of feedstock or customer constraints.
What to inspect and how to interpret it
Go to “Attractive Profit Pools Exist Along the Value Chain” and Exhibit 3. Then inspect Exhibit 4 under “Heterogeneous Archetypes Form Recycling Ecosystems.”
Published December 7, 2023: its market and regulatory assumptions require updating before investment use. A high-margin stage may be inaccessible to a particular firm even when it looks attractive on a chart.
E14 · Company reportPresentation reference
ASML — Annual Report 2024
The clearest company-report sample
Offer a concise company brief generated from the richer model: position in the chain, necessary inputs, major capabilities, dependencies, commercial choices and measurable outcomes.
What to inspect and how to interpret it
Go to printed pages 41–43: resources, business model, and stakeholder outcomes. Also inspect printed page 173, “Our value chain overview.” The linked SEC filing includes the report pages as illustrations and text.
This is corporate reporting, not a complete supplier graph or a quantified competitive opportunity engine. Use its clarity and hierarchy for exported briefs.
E15 · ReportDefence reference
US DoD — Securing Defense-Critical Supply Chains
Capability gaps → interventions and owners
Turn a gap into an intervention record with a responsible actor, prerequisite, evidence, value at stake and decision deadline. Carry cross-cutting constraints across work packages instead of repeating disconnected narrative comments.
What to inspect and how to interpret it
Read printed pages 7–11 for focus areas, strategic enablers and the recommendations framework. Use pages 24–30 for the castings/forgings chapter structure. Printed page 8 is PDF page 12.
This February 2022 US report is a structural benchmark. It does not establish current Canadian policy, program selection, supplier eligibility or regional economic potential.